The Tribune

• Hilton hits ‘3,000 run rate’ within first week

• BISX-listed firm nears 500,000 tests done

• Free COVID testing? Someone must pay

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Doctors Hospital is aiming to expand its COVID-19 testing sites to southern New Providence after its newly-opened British Colonial Hilton location hit a “3,000 run rate within the first week”.

Dennis Deveaux, the BISX-listed healthcare provider’s chief financial officer, told Tribune Business that it is also seeking to take its PCR and rapid antigen services to other Bahamian islands as the total number of tests it has performed to-date rapidly approaches the 500,000 mark.

With demand likely to increase as a result of the government’s revised testing protocols set to take effect tomorrow, he added that Doctors Hospital has already expanded this service to Grand Bahama and is now aiming to do the same with Exuma.

Some 150 persons are employed by Doctors Hospital on COVID-19 testing, and Mr Deveaux said the healthcare provider is focused on “price leadership” where Bahamians and residents “cannot find a better priced test in Nassau”.

Tribune Business previously revealed that the COVID-19 testing roll-out had given the BISX-listed firm a significant multi-million dollar boost for the financial year that closed at end-January 2021, but the Doctors Hospital financial chief said the issue of whether testing should be free - as demanded by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) - was “a public policy question” to be put to the Government rather than the company.

Besides its two main COVID testing centres at the Town Centre Mall and Doctors Hospital West (Blake Road), the healthcare provider has also partnered with mega resorts Atlantis and Baha Mar to provide on-site testing to those properties’ guests and staff.

Arguing that infection rates and numbers at both those resorts were “infinitesimally small”, Mr Deveaux disclosed: “We’re approaching the deliver of half-a-million COVID-19 tests. If you start to think about what that means to partners like Atlantis and Baha Mar, so many of the other hotels on Paradise Island, so many businesses to safely re-open, and tourists departing back home...........

“We employ around 150 people that are engaged in COVID-19 testing around Nassau. We have plans for expansion because the need is there. We set up a testing site at the Hilton, and within a week the run rate was roughly about 3,000 tests [per week]. 

“That speaks to the demand as the economy starts to recover, more and more tourists come, and they require testing to go home while Bahamians and residents need it for inter-island travel. We stand in that gap, and our testing capacity is significant. We sought at the beginning to put in high throughput, high efficiency testing.”

Mr Deveaux, who spoke with this newspaper prior to the Government unveiling its revised COVID testing protocols for travel, said the new Hilton testing site’s numbers did not include Royal Caribbean and Crystal Cruises’ home porting passengers prior to their departure from Nassau Cruise Port on weekly seven-night cruises.

He added that Doctor’s Hospital’s partnership with the Town Centre Mall and its owners, the Symonette and Darville families, had enabled it to offer the “lowest cost” and “most affordable” COVID-19 tests on New Providence. This had helped to mitigate price rises imposed by supply chain cost increases, which have pushed rapid antigen tests up from $16-$18 VAT inclusive to around $22 VAT inclusive.

“My role is to provide healthcare that is affordable and accessible,” Mr Deveaux reiterated. “Our role is ensuring we have price leadership so that you cannot find a better priced COVID-19 test in Nassau. It’s about affordability.”

This newspaper previously reported that Doctors Hospital enjoyed a $7.747m revenue boost as a result of administering more than 100,000 COVID-19 tests during the ten months to end-January 2021. It revealed to shareholders in its annual report for that year that the income from COVID testing was the key factor in delivering an 18.6 percent year-over-year increase in total revenues to $76.398m.

This top-line surge also helped Doctors Hospital overcome what it had originally anticipated would be a sharp drop in profitability, after April 2020 resulted in a 44.2 percent year-over-year revenue drop and net loss as numerous services and procedures were either reduced or cancelled due to the pandemic’s start.

The healthcare provider turned around a $351,917, or 16.4 percent, year-over-year decline in net income for its first quarter by transforming it into a 107 percent increase in full-year profits, which more than doubled from the prior year’s $6.009m to $12.439m for the 12 months to end-January 2021.

With a $750,000 investment in capital equipment and laboratory renovations, Doctors Hospital said: “In financial year 2021, COVID-19 testing revenues at Doctors Hospital (Bahamas) were $7.747m associated with the completion of 37,778 RT-PCR and 65,954 rapid antigen tests, the overwhelming majority of which were performed on an outpatient basis and in support of large corporate clients as part of their safe return to work strategies.

“Despite a COVID-19 related decline in outpatient services, emergency room visits and elective procedures in the first quarter of financial year 2021, where revenues and inpatient days declined sharply, the profit structure of Doctors Hospital (Bahamas) recovered robustly toward the end of 2021.”

These figures are understood to have raised eyebrows, especially given calls led by the PLP, in particular, that the Government needs to make COVID-19 testing free throughout The Bahamas for both citizens and residents in a bid to better counter the virus’s spread and current case surge.

However, Mr Deveaux argued that someone would have to pay for COVID-19 testing whether it was made “free” or not. Free testing would likely require further spending by the Government on behalf of Bahamian taxpayers, and the Doctors Hospital chief said this was a question for the Minnis administration rather than himself.

“There has to be a payer for healthcare services,” he explained. “While testing for the end-user could be free, someone has to pay for staff, the test kits and the infrastructure. That’s more a public policy question. Others need to speak to whether it’s free or not. Our services, because we need to fund the investment, we need to make sure it’s affordable and quality is not compromised.”

Mr Deveaux said Doctors Hospital has had a fully operational COVID-19 testing centre in place in Grand Bahama for three months now, with the numbers increasing every month, having partnered with a local physician there for its launch.

It plans to do similar in Exuma, although that has been delayed because its partner there became ill, while it is also seeking “another location in the southern part of Nassau in response to need”.